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The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth
World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
Secretariat.
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AS WRITTEN
Fourth World Conference on Women
Beijing, China, September 7, 1995
Mrs. Mongella,
distinguished delegates,
and guests.
Thank you for inviting me to speak.
My name is Jeanne Head. I am the International Right To Life
Federation's (IRLF), representative to the U.N. in New York. I speak
on behalf of IRLF, as a woman, as an obstetric nurse, and as one who
has spent my life caring for women and children.
IRLF is a world-wide Federation of pro-life organisations from over
170 countries. We are dedicated to the protection of all innocent
human life from conception to natural death. We see a woman's life as
a continuum deserving compassionate protection and support beginning
at her conception and proceeding throughout her entire life cycle.
IRLF is committed to ensuring respect and protection for women during
the later years of their life when they are most vulnerable to
abandonment by their families or society, to securing protection and
appropriate assistance for young women and their children who are
susceptible to social neglect, and to the full protection of the girl
child from the very beginning of her life in her mother's womb.
Universally, women need basic security such as housing, medical care
before and after pregnancy, educational opportunities, protection
from physical or mental abuse, and societal respect. A woman's life
is enhanced by a supportive and loving family life as daughter,
sister, mother, wife and friend. Tragically abortion is the most
destructive act within the family -- destroying ties between mother,
father, and child. Where abortion has been legalised, we have already
seen great damage to women and the family as a result.
Unfortunately the overemphasis on "reproductive health" in this and
other U.N. documents neglects the wider and urgent health and social
issues of women everywhere, particularly in the developing world..
Women in many parts of the world need clean water, nutrition, and
basic health care for themselves and their families -- not the
"right" to violently destroy their children before they are born.
This draft document contains bracketed language referring to so
called "unsafe abortion" with the false and dangerous implication
that abortion, if legalised, can be made safe. Women suffer serious,
physical, emotional, and psychological damage and even death from so-
called "safe legal abortion".
Just last month, in New York City in my own country, one doctor had
his licence temporarily suspended for botching the legal abortions of
several women and another was convicted of second degree murder for
causing the death of a woman during a so-called "safe" legal
abortion. These are not isolated examples in the United States.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the dramatic
decline in maternal mortality rates in the developed world coincided
". . . with the development of obstetric techniques and improvements
in the general health status of women." There is ample data for
documenting this in the U.S. where the most significant impact of
legalisation of abortion has been an increase in the number of
abortions. The US Planned Parenthood's Alan Guttmacher Institute, in
a report of June, 1994 stated: "In most countries, it is common after
abortion is legalised for abortion rates to rise sharply for several
years, than stabilise, just as we have seen in the United States. "
In the U.S. where abortion has been legal for over twenty yeas and
where health standards ate high, maternal mortality is four times
that of Ireland where abortion is not legal and which has one of the
lowest maternal mortality rates in the world.
The key, therefore, to reduction in maternal mortality rates from all
causes is to improve maternal health care. In the developing world --
where medical care, antibiotics, and even basic asepsis are scarce or
absent -- promoting abortion would increase, not decrease, maternal
mortality.
And, of course, abortion is never safe for the youngest member of the
human family -- the unborn child who at the time of the abortion at
eight or ten weeks of pregnancy already has a beating heart, brain
waves, eyes, eats, fingers and toes.
The girl child is in special danger from the practice of female
foeticide as well as female infanticide. The internationally
recognised magazine The Economist in it’s August 5,199S issue
commented "When abortion is legal and routine . . . it is almost
impossible to regulate sex selection abortion."
It is important for the delegates to remember that abortion was
rejected as a fundamental right and as a method of family planning
by the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)
in Cairo last year.
And it is urgent for you to understand that the document presented to
you here in Beijing distorts and expands on the Cairo document in
regard to abortion and so-called “reproductive health" issues.
The selective and unqualified use of the language from the Cairo
document in the Beijing document can only be interpreted as an
attempt to circumvent and undermine national constitutions and laws.
The governing paragraph protecting national sovereignty, for example,
which appeals as the first paragraph in Chapter 2 on Principles in
the Cairo document has been put into the Beijing document as a
bracketed footnote the idea of which is also bracketed.
Unless this Beijing document is amended to accurately reflect the
language and intent of the Cairo ICPD document, it can give license
to financially powerful governmental and non-governmental
organisations to interfere with the abortion policies of at least 95
sovereign nations whose laws provide protection for unborn children.
The concerns I've voiced today ate shared by hundreds of NGO groups
represented at this conference. Our views are not represented in the
NGO report that has been distributed to the delegates. We urge the
many delegates who share our beliefs to stand firm against the
cultural imperialistic tactics of the Western world.